Author: Destiny Riley

In its most basic sense, identity can be defined as the distinguishing character or personality of an individual. Personal identity deals with “philosophical questions that arise about ourselves by virtue of our being people” (Olson, 2002). Throughout Ancient Greek times, identity was discussed in a different way than it is discussed today. Early rhetorical works described the psyche as the defining factor of identity and later works described it primarily in relation to our environments. However, the meaning of it has changed. While important rhetorical figures, such as Plato and theorist Kenneth Burke, formulated identity in one way, there are now new formulations of the term coming from scholars, such as sociologist Stuart Hall and legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, that are changing the meaning of the term. Today, identity is greatly determined by not only physical representations of ourselves, but also by factors such as race and ethnicity, class, religion, gender, sexuality, and culture. It is often constituted and described in relation to media. Unlike in Ancient Greek literature, forms such as media and entertainment play a large role in how the public views the meaning and importance of identity. This shift is important to the field of Rhetoric and Communication, as it marks a need for rhetoric scholars to listen to these newer theories and transform how “identity” is defined in the field.

Rhetoric and communication scholars have described identity in a multitude of ways. In early rhetorical works, such as Plato’s Alcibiades 1, Plato suggests that our identity is constituted by our psyche as opposed to our identity being constituted by our body or a combination of the psyche and body. Here, we see Plato describing the concept of identity in a philosophical sense, or as having a philosophical nature. In more modern times, such as the 1960s and 1970s, theorists, such as rhetorical theorist Kenneth Burke, described identity as a dialectical relationship between individuality and sociality. He identified this complex relationship as the ‘‘universal rhetorical situation’’ (Crable, 2006). Burke calls on us to grapple with the relationship between individuality and sociality. As rhetoric scholars specially, we must attempt to discover what we do not know in regards to rhetoric and how it is tied to identification. This can revolutionize our knowledge of our selfhood and identity. Burke’s configuration strongly suggests the importance that the notion of identity plays in the field of Rhetoric and Communication studies and why so many scholars and theorists, such as sociologist Stuart Hall, have analyzed it in more contemporary times.

It is interesting to decipher the ways in which the sociological view of identity compares to the rhetorical view so that we, as scholars, can see how other fields are talking about the same subjects and how their views may influence ours. Unlike Plato and Kenneth Burke, Stuart Hall believed that there are three different conceptions of identity. There is the Enlightenment subject, the sociological subject, and the post-modern subject. The Enlightenment subject constitutes a fully-centered individual with the capacity for reason, consciousness, and action; the sociological subject constitutes an autonomous, self-sufficient person, but one who is also formed in relation to others in society in the modern world; the post-modern subject constitutes a person with no fixed, essential, or permanent identity (Hall, 1995). Understandably, Hall’s view on identity is rooted in the idea that identities are a combination of our autonomy as humans as well as how our identities are shaped by the environments we are in. In its post-modern sense, identity is very much an ambiguous concept. By presenting comparable views on the same subject, the sociological view of identify assists in shaping how identity is viewed in Rhetoric and Communication studies.

To understand more about the important relationship between identity and rhetoric, it is clear that we must have a solid understanding of the notion of identification. There is a crucial relationship between identity and identification that exists in the field of Rhetoric and Communication studies, as we cannot understand this field without understanding identification. To gain a better understanding of this, I will circle back to Burke’s theory. Burke also believed in this sense of ambiguity in relation to identity, mostly when it came to the relationship of identity to identification and rhetoric. Burke claimed that we should ‘‘put identification and division ambiguously together, so that [we] cannot know for certain just where one ends and the other begins, and [we] have the characteristic invitation to rhetoric’’ (Crable, 2006). To begin to do this work, we must clearly define identification.

In its most basic sense, we typically define identification as a “means of proving a person's identity, especially in the form of official papers” (Google Dictionary, n.d.). A more detailed definition of identification is the “psychological orientation of the self in regard to something (such as a person or group) with a resulting feeling of close emotional association” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, n.d.). While the second definition goes more in-depth, both definitions are valid. The most common understanding of identification is how we are identified by governmentally mandated identification documents, such as licenses, passports, and state IDs. This type of identification has existed for centuries (Caplan, 2014). The contemporary sense of identity emerged around the 17th century (Caplan, 2014). It was marked by a double meaning that we currently understand and reference. The first meaning “connotes the sameness of one entity with another” while the second meaning is “identity as self-sameness, or the capacity of an entity to be stably and continuously itself” (Caplan, 2014). If this is how identification has constituted identity throughout history, how is identity understood today?

In more modern times, people have created a multitude of categories of identification that we understand as reflecting identities. These categories include race and ethnicity, class, religion, gender, and sexuality. Just as Kenneth Burke described in his theory of identity, these identities have become more fluid and ambiguous, specifically in American society and culture. Though most people know the meanings of these words, we often think of them as separate entities. However, they often exist together as intertwined identities with associated power. This intertwinement of identities, accompanied with their relation to power, is known more commonly as “intersectionality,” shapes the way we as human beings exist in the world. Even more specifically, it shapes how we view identity in the field of Rhetoric and Communication studies.

Today, the concept of “intersectionality” has become one of the most essential facets in understanding the concept of identity. Black legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” in a 1989 paper as a way to help explain the oppression of African-American women. In the paper, Crenshaw argued that Black women are discriminated against in ways that often do not fit solely within the legal categories of either “racism” or “sexism,” but as a combination of both racism and sexism (“Kimberlé Crenshaw on Intersectionality,”, n.d.). While Black women have always been at the heart of this term, the concept of intersectionality has now become applicable to a much larger population. Intersectionality is now, though often misused, commonly thought of as a way to analyze how bias based on identities such as race and sexuality work together to cause injustice and oppression that shows up in various ways throughout the world.

Media, an object of study in Rhetoric and Communications, plays a major role in the ways that identity, specifically intersectionality, is portrayed and understood today. With social media, identity is often seen as validated by the amount of “likes” and comments people receive on various platforms. Differences between our “real” and “online identities can shape not only how others perceive us but our self-perceptions” (“The Self in Selfie,” n.d.) which can cause us to feel pressure to take on the identities of others or to alter our own identities. Social media has also provided sites for us to witness and discuss the lack of intersectionality in many television shows and films, but also the inclusion of it in others. Television shows such as FX’s Pose and films such as Moonlight have come to represent beacons of light in a dark world of media that has turned a blind eye to the lack of representation of those who identify as Black, gay, transgender, etc.



With social media, the importance of identity is also typically seen within the realm of social movements and social media activism, with movements such as #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo. Inclusivity with these movements has become key. There cannot be any substantial solidarity, change, or progress unless inclusivity of identities is at the forefront of these social movements. Intersectionality has proven to be useful in “deconstructing and understanding discrimination and representations in media” (Freeland, 2017) as we analyze who is being represented and how they are being represented.

To truly understand the importance of Rhetoric and Communication studies as scholars, it is imperative that we understand the concept of identity. This not only includes its long history, but also the countless ways in which it presents itself in our lives and societies today. Rhetoric and Communication are two of the most imperative fields of study that are present in human discourse. Rhetoric is “woven into the fabric of existence” (Crable, 2006) and, therefore, the major facets of it must be analyzed and understood. While past rhetorical works described the psyche and our relation to others and environments as the defining factors of identity, identity today is also constituted and described by the characteristics of the concept of intersectionality, as well as in relation to media. Whether we realize it or not, our identity affects how we exist in the world and how we view other people and situations. We bring these views and perspectives into our work as Rhetoric and Communication studies scholars, so it is imperative that we make the effort to understand them. To ensure that this field of study remains relevant in the future, it is our responsibility as scholars to continuously aim for inclusion and intersectionality in everything we do.

Works Cited

Caplan, J. (2014, June 9). Identity and Identification. Speech presented in London, UK.

Crable, B. (2006). Rhetoric, Anxiety, and Character Armor: Burke’s Interactional Rhetoric of Identity. Western Journal of Communication, 70(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/10570310500305570.

Definition of Identification (n.d.) Retrieved March 15, 2019 from Google Dictionary.

Definition of Identification. (n.d.). Retrieved March 15, 2019, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/identification.

Freeland, K. Intersectionality and Media and Pop Culture. Intersectionality. (2017). Retrieved March 15 from http://intersectionality.pbworks.com/w/page/107918066/Intersectionality%20and%20Media%20and%20Popular%20Culture.

Hall, S. (1995). The Question of Cultural Identity. In S. Hall, D. Held, D. Hubert, and K. Thompson (Eds.) Modernity: An Introduction to Modern Societies (pp. 597-632). Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Kimberlé Crenshaw on Intersectionality, More than Two Decades Later. (n.d.). Retrieved February 13, 2019, from Columbia Law School website: https://www.law.columbia.edu/pt-br/news/2017/06/kimberle-crenshaw-intersectionality.

Olson, E. T. (2002). Personal Identity. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2017/entries/identity-personal/.

The Self in Selfie: Identity in the Age of Social Media | Northwestern Center for Talent Development. (n.d.). Retrieved April 10, 2019, from https://www.ctd.northwestern.edu/blog/self-selfie-identity-age-social-media.